h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'd definately like to hear all of it from him if at all possible, and I'm willing to wait a month if need be.

I understand the idea that you presented. Although the guess about the angle of time to the spatial axis seemed a little strange. Like you said, it was a guess. I'll wait around and see if he feels like explaining it.

Actually, it's not that far off - lookee here what I found on the Internet (search terms - "dimensions perpendicular time space limit speed light angle 90" on Google)...

45. . .0. . .45 (These two lines are meant to be at 45 degrees)
. .\. . .|. . . / ^
. . \. . | . . / .|
. . .\. .|. . / . | Time
. . . \. | . / . .|
. . . .\ |' /. .
. .'__ \|/__
. .<------->
. . Space

From what I've read, this is a fairly accurate picture of the Universe based on General Relativity (NO jokes about how rubbish the *diagram* is, though - it's the concept that counts, and besides, it took me all of 5 minutes ). A stationary object is at 0 degrees to the time axis, while the speed of light is at 45. The reason nothing can travel faster than this comes about because then it would be 'spacelike'.

Yep, it seems that once again David got it almost right - only to discover that he was beaten to it.

By the way, he confirms that the limit was to do with the angle, only he thought (like me) that it was 90 degrees. Expect a reply tomorrow. (Wonder of wonders! He doth replieth before a twelth-year hath passed! Oh, blessed be etc. )

- Jordan

(See the section about parallel universes in http://www.astronomical.org/astbook/blkhole.html for more information. Failing that - i.e. if the moderator deletes the URL - just use my search terms in Google, the article is under "PAS General Articles".)

Yes yes, very nice indeed, this wasn't the information I was looking for. That page is a nine year old document on relativity, and allowing for space travel. I wrote a paper on using black holes and white holes for tavelling, there's just one problem with that. The connection between the two spinning singularities doesn't stay open for very long. It eventually collapses unless you can force it open. Einstein and Schwartchild calculated this along with the whole idea of singualrities existing.

My question was the diagram based on the string. The diagrem looks fine. My confusion was that you said 'if' time was perpendicular to space. If you have two dimensions 'space' and 'time' and one starts out perpendicular to the other, not matter how you bend the 'space' axis, the 'time' axis is going to be perpendicular. And we can see from relativity that 'time' is not perpendicular to the 'space' axis. Besides the fact that we don't live in two dimensions, we live in at /least/ four observable dimensions.

This is a reasonable viewpoint, but you should be aware of the steps that were taken to prevent any information changing. Back when the Bible had to be duplicated by hand, it was done by the specially trained men known as scribes. These people went as far as counting the letters on each page to ensure that no mistake had been made. I have only seen one instance of one fact changing the rest of the information and that is Mormonism, in which the teachings of the book of Mormon can change the meaning of everything in the Bible that would otherwise disprove them. However there are at least two problems with this:
1. If this information was really to change everything in the Bible, surely they would have been pointed out in the beginning so that the Bible could be understood.
2. It relies on God planning for Adam to sin. Since God commanded Adam not to sin, this does not make sense.

It was this second argument that brought us onto the 2D spacetime example. First of all, I know of course that there are at least 4 observable dimensions (and possibly 6 or 26, according to some theories) but most people find 4 dimensions hard to understand, so I tried to make it simpler by putting it in two dimensions. But I must carry this on later because I have only a few minutes left until my lesson.


But don't those theories require that life must already have existed somewhere, therefore just putting off the ultimate question? Also, you have to remember that we are more than alive, we are self-aware, which is a discrete value that cannot be explained by a neural network or some other chemical thing.


But although certain variables, such as size have changed, the definition of corn has not. When we observe how different varieties of dogs have 'evolved', they have different sizes, different chemicals causing different colours, different markings, but they always remain the same species.
Also, in the example of the lungfish, how could lungs evolve, except by a sudden change in one generation which is unlikely. After all, a half-evolved, incomplete lung system would give no natural benefit to the fish at all.

That 'Mormonism' bit was a jibe at me - wasn't it, David! Just you wait - I shall arrange for Mary's Bar to withhold your flapjacks. [Evil ] You...

...erm...

I'll get you back when I think of something nasty to say about you. Ha!

- Jordan

Back to that theory. If you remember the issue I was considering at the time, after arguing with my Dad, was whether it was possible to have both predestination and free will in the same universe. The particular point I was considering at the time was with Jordan, who said that "if God didn't want Adam and Eve to sin, why did he create them, knowing that they would do so?"
To which I answered, "He could only have known that once it was already established that they were created, because if he had not created them, there would be nothing to foresee."
We need to start seeing things from Gods point of view, leading to my illustration of a table surface representing a universe with two dimensions, a single dimension of space and a dimension of time. Place a string on the table (roughly parallel to the time dimension, but curving in places) representing a life form with free will - the freedom to determine whether it will move to the left or to the right. You are now in a position comparable to that of God. You can see the universe in it's entirety. You can force the life form to move in certain ways if you wish, but if the string has any natural inclination of it's own (which it may have if it has been twisted or something beforehand), you can choose to let it follow that path. Yet, you can see what is going to happen to it.
The only thing you now need to adjust in your view is that in this illustration, you yourself exist in time, and the time you are observing is therefore a kind of two dimensional time in which time itself can be affected over time (we have seen examples of this in films like 'Back to the future' and 'Star Trek:First Contact' in which the present is altered by someone going back in time. As far as we know, time is one-dimensional, which means that any changes you made back in the past would already have been made before you time-travelled). Considering yourself in this illustration to be God, you cannot change your mind about anything - If you act, there is no such thing as 'before you act' or 'after you act'.
This theory shows how God prophesies a person commiting evil even though it is the persons own choice to do it, and they are therefore still accountable for their actions. You as an illustrative god may see the string heading for evil and choose to warn it that it is about to do so, but by your non-dimensional nature you have already warned it, and it goes to the evil anyway.

This being the theory, how does it relate to relativity? The first and most obvious way in the proposal that time is a dimension, that the future already exists and the past still exists, it is only that you are not currently percieving them.
Next, consider that the lifeform has a soul, which travels along the lifetime at a constant speed. When the string is at an angle to time (that is, when it is travelling), the soul will be traveling through time at a slower rate and an observer would believe that the life form was doing things more slowly. This point of the theory would only apply to a sentient being (whereas in reality it has been shown to apply to, for example, a clock), but it may be applicable to other objects if the word soul is replaced by some other concept.
Finally, an observer in this 2D universe would see the size of the lifeform parallel to the space axis. When it was at an angle to time (when it is travelling) it would appear to be longer. We are all familiar with this effect, as we have seen the Starship Enterprise expand in the direction in which it is travelling, as it accelerates to lightspeed (and beyond, in the relativity-defying world of Star Trek)!

I cannot understand the whole of the theory of relativity, but I have a copy of the paper (I think) and as far as I can tell, it is these principles (that things appear differently relative to different observers) on which the whole theory is based, including the mass-energy equivalence formula (which, by the way, is also hinted at in the Bible - we are told that the reason all the stars etc. can exist is because of Gods having an 'abundance of dynamic energy', which is the truth - matter is created when there is an abundance of energy).

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Oh of course they were careful in their methods, who wouldn't be with the 'words' of 'god' . You're of course forgetting the fact that the bible was transported word of mouth for thousands of years before it was written down, as the events happened.

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Why yes insight, some of them do. Who is to say that there has to be a creation of the universe (multiverse if you will depending on what theory you up-hold) I've seen something rather recent that involves collisions of two outside dimensions, which contain our four dimension, that causes the energy needed to bring about the matter that we have. The universe, if you will, might just 'be'. I haven't gotten a chance to look at it completely but that seemed to be the jist of it.

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Also, who are we to say that we are the only self aware creatures on this planet? Is my pet fish non-aware of his existence simply because he lacks the digits to write down a 'theory' of his own existence? Just because we can contemplate and record our ideas is not the only reason that makes us self aware.

As to your take on the evolution that we've seen in the past. Just because it's still defined as corn doesn't mean it hasn't evolved. It has changed on a genetic level...it has evolved. Maybe it's not hugely different, but the example is meant as some proof of natural selection working. Albeit artificial in nature, it still works the same way. Some variable is seen as favorable in the long run (some traits might just get a species past some sort of natural disaster that another might not be able to make it past) and that gene is carried on. What happens to the other? They die, and we find their bones or other remains buried as fossils.

I could seriously get into evolutionary theory with you if you want to, but I don't think that it would do any of us any good. We both have our opinions, and I don't see how there's any way around that.

Ok, now that the rants over

I really like that theory on predestination and free will working in the universe.

It looks very possible according to what you have. Relativity isn't really that hard if you stick to Einsteins thought problems and really try and think them through. They only thing that gets a little dicey is the mathmatics, and that's really not a huge problem. You've definately nailed the concepts quite well. Objects that are moving relative to us appear to be smaller. Also, as you approach light speed, you're time takes a limit to zero. (the reason for the twin paradox) And not only can energy form matter, but it can work in reverse as well.

The idea that god would be 'floating' so to speak in a time dimension would work quite well actually, as we already know that our three space dimensions are contained within the time dimension. I think my only problem with it as a whole would be the addition of dimensions other than the four. This is due to the fact that these dimensions get really strange. From what I've read, some of them may be contained within our four dimensions, but there are others that may contain the time dimension, and the rest of them. This would mean that God would be contained within a dimension, and would not be 'outside' of everything. It would seem that god would need a creator as well. This could very well be possible, God could just be the God of four space for all we know

I'd also remind you not to forget about the calculation for singularities. There's lots of nifty ideas concerning these, I think it was Hawking that presented the idea that since we may be created from a singularty, and we know how a singularity can be created, it might be possible for a more advanced race outside of our 'universe' to have created the singulatity that created our universe. We may very well have a creator after all, but does that necesarrily mean that it's a supernatural being? Sure, but only compared to us that is.

I think that since God created the universe, he would be outside it altogether, not just floating in the time dimension.
On the evolution point, you said that it had changed on a genetic level meaning that some variable had changed. But my point was, a variable is all that it is. It's continuous values, such as size, shape, hue etc may change, but this is vastly different from new things being created. Think of a spreadsheet made for a certain purpose. Changing certain constants eg. tax rate will cause it to act differently, but they won't change the task it was designed to do or give it some new ability.
As for the self-awareness, I'm not necessarily saying that animals don't possess it. But it had to come from somewhere. A bunch of neurons interacting provides not the least explanation for how they could be aware of their existence. Sure they could appear to be, and probably noone can prove his own self-awareness to anyone else. But we each know that we personally are self-aware, and this cannot be explained by a physical process.
This is what I've always considered the most important factor in favour of creation - that evolution relies on science, and incredibly shaky and unstable science at that, but there are some things that science simply cannot explain on it's own.

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The thing is that evolution runs on a series of these small changes. We don't just see an organism being 'created', it's usually similar in appearence, or at least in genetic structure to what preceded it.
If an organisms appearence (size shape hue etc) is only on one or a few genes, then a small change can make a huge difference, and it may seem like it's a totally difference organism, but looking at that genetic structure can tell us that it was only a small variable that caused such a difference.

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This may seem like a dumb question, but, why? There's no reason at all why chemical signals wouldn't make us self aware. The reason that we are self aware is simply because of our senses, and our ability to think. I'm not claiming that anybody knows for sure what makes the brain tick, but there is certainly the possibility that chemical and electrical signals are the sole reason.


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The thing is that the main reason I've seen evolution as a better process is that creation relies on dogma, and you can't prove dogma. You have to beleive it /without/ proof, otherwise you undermind gods authority. Proving dogma causes religion to collapse in upon itself, because it has nothing more to beleive in.

That and I don't see how science lies on shaky ground in most instances. From my experience, science works darned well for almost every practical purpose that one can think of. The methods behind it are sound.

But then again, there really isn't that much of a difference between religion and science IMO, they're really just both beleif systems fundamentally.

When I said 'shaky and unstable science', I wasn't referring to science in general, just that particular area. Newtonian physics were around for a few hundred years I think, then were replaced in the early 1900's by Relativity theory as being the more accurate, which has more or less prevailed so far. They must be quite stable theories. Evolution is not a stable theory, as most times when I talk to someone about it I hear a new version, with no reason for it other than that the previous version was shown to be inaccurate. Most science is not shaky as predictions can be made by the theory and then tested. Such tests are difficult to conduct in the case of Evolution, and even when they are they are not particularly reliable (which is unfortunate, because they tend to support creation anyway). One example was submitting many fruit flies to X-Rays, increasing the probability of mutation and therefore the speed of evolution. They were also put into an unusual environment to see how they adapted. The result was that the mutants had malformed legs, eyes, wings etc, but they always remained fruit flies. They were also always inferior to the original. One scientist remarked that 'the changes were so small that even if all the mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species.' Finally, when the flies mated, normal flies began to hatch after a few generations. These were eventually the survivors over the weaker mutants, preserving the fruit fly in the form in which it originally existed.

Not the best proof - the radiation that they were being exposed to far exceeds that which is usually encountered on this planet. Forced evolution cannot simulate nature, and is seldom intended to - thus selective breeding is designed to for the continuance of 'beneficial' mutations as defined by those forcing it. Consider the differences here: the experiment mentionsed would result in a large number of changes in *each organism* - thus any advantageous mutations would be swamped by a huge number of undesirable ones. Besides which, evolution (at least in its earlier stages) would involve far more generations and potential variety. The research also fails to consider the influence of *environment* on evolution - there was no attempt at selection, which ignores a fundamental factor in the evolution of an organism - that it is the ecology of the system that shapes it members. Finally, the end result (the fruit flies converged back on a more normal configuration after a few generations) was more a proof of evolution than otherwise - the fittest, apparently, *were* surviving, rather than the vastly mutated versions. To summarise, the experiment did not simply accelerate evolution - as a matter of fact, it probably hindered it.
I'm not a great fan of evolution - I just feel compelled to rip holes in any argument that David presents . I call it 'revenge'. (Bwa ha ha ha!) I think the best arguments for creation lie in the improbability of (a) the beginning; (c) the middle and (b) the end product. By which I mean that it is fantastically unlikely that the complex interplay of factors that sparked life off could ever have happened. Then, we have to ask how such things as lungs could have evolved partially - what use would half a lung be? Also, the last few million years of our evolution allegedly constitute a period of intense growth in mental abilities, and the redundancy with which we have been provided is astonishing - I recall that David presented a figure to the effect that we only use a tenth of one percent of our capacity in our lifetimes. (This estimate is probably not very reliable, but it's a starting point.)
That's all. See y'all later!

- Jordan

Insight, I understand what you're saying about the science of evolution being shaky. And it should be understandable for evolution to be shaky. It's a relatively new science, when compared to astronomy, physics, and mathematics. These three sciences had many confusing periods early on when one theory would be thrown out by another one in rapid succession. We still have even today theories that get thrown out of those two, it doesn't make them less stable, this basic idea in science that no theory is absolute makes it more stable.

It's for that reason it seems unstable, because of those diffences. But the differing ideas that you speak of (I think) of evolution would involve the creation. It's very difficult to try and predict what could have created us. There isn't one simple reason for it. There's a whole host of possibilities that could be allowed, one of them even that god or a host of gods could have created us. There's just no definate answer. The only thing that we can say for some resonable certainty is that genetic variations can cause changes in species. This isn't some kind of scienctific 'trickery', it's observable in fossil evidence. There may be some inconsistencies, but remember, there's a lot of Earth to dig through, and it's a relatively new science.

I'm also wondering about your point that evolutionary evidence directly proves creation theory. The genetic varations seem allowable for god, but creation by random means, and there /are/ a lot of random means, says that there is no reason for a god or gods to create us. What I'm saying is that the probability that a deity created us is the same as the random means that some evolutionary theories state.

ok then, Jordan:

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This is a very simple question to answer. Just go out at night, and look up. There are literally hundreds of billions of stars that we can observe through vision and other optical means. Some of these are galaxies, which contain many more stars. The odds seem to dictate that life could have formed at least once around at least one of these stars. Since we are here, then it happened at /least/ once. Especially with the fact that stellar evoution is an ongoing process, new stars and systems are forming constantly. Our own star is a second generation star, meaning that it formed from the remains of another star itself. With the recent discoveries that there are planets around other stars, the chances seem to be getting even better.

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This doesn't really seem like that hard of a question to answer either. If you cut your lung in half, you will still survive. If you were developed deformed in this way, due to a genetic mutation, you could possibly pass this on to your children. That really depends on the genetic make up of your partner really.

Lung development probably comes from the fish that eventually developed to walk on land. These fish have been found, and if I'm not mistaken, there's still some left with the ability to do so. The fish on my desktop has a lung assembly, it's not perfect, but that's why evolution happens. Somewhere along the line a fish most likely mutated to form a fully capable lung assembly. The odds aren't really that great, but remember, there's millions of years of rapidly breeding fish to take into account. With this in mind the odds become more in favor of some lung devlopment to occur. The sme basic idea also accounts for any number of deviations to form new species. Yes, the fish is still a fish, but with more mutation of the finned lung fish living on land over another thousand, million years, it seems possible to happen. The thing is there's no set /time/ period for evolutionary changes. When you base it all on chance, which evolutionary theory does in a lot of instances, it could happen at /any/ time.

I do agree with you about the fact that most evolutionary theories don't account for environmental conditions. The major reason they don't IMO is that it's too random to account for. Weather patterns may seem predictable, but they're really not. (if you study chaos theory you'll understand) Same thing goes for events outside the Earth. There's any number of events that could cause mutation or genetic variation. Near by super novas, meteor impactcs can wipe out an entire genetic line that's not able to cope with quick temperature changes. There's also the idea of crustal displacement theory, seems pretty resonable to me (despite the fact that it has cost many people in pretty nice positions to lose their jobs). This also could wipe out species, or even cause other species to flourish (the pre-cambrian explosion is one such possible effect)

The idea that human evolution is actually occuring by natural selection is kind of absured isn't it? We really have gone beyond natural selection. We change our environment to suit us, people who don't adapt to cold tempuratures don't die, they go inside. It's because of this that our evolution has stopped for now. There's no cause for natural selection to occur, there are genetic mutations that occur, and still are some recessive genes that carry on. Reason for this is that we don't kill our young if they are strange. We raise them, and reinsert them into the gene pool.

We have grown in mental abilities, that's a simple fact to understand, but that's not so much genetic as it is our understanding and passing on of knowledge. Our brains may be bigger, but probably because most people who carried on genetic code were the brighter of the bunch, able to cope with the expanding of this knowledge, and able to adapt to it's ideas and use them to survive. But now, and over the last few thousand years, you didn't need to be smart to survive, all the ideas of how to survive despite your deficiences have been pretty much laid out.

I'm not sure about your idea about one tenth of a percent of our capacity. Our capacity of what

I know this, because I know an old man who, due to being in a war, only has half a lung (or maybe two-thirds). (It's spooky the way only half of his chest rises when he breathes!) By half a lung, I was referring to a half-developed lung. eg. A windpipe without a lung, or a lung that oxygen could flow into but with which you can't actually breathe in and out. According to evolution, it would have had to start developing somewhere, and the start of it developing gives no natural advantage - in fact, possibly a disadvantage. The same argument could apply to many organs, especially the sexual ones! If a lifeform could reproduce asexually, why would it evolve sexual organs, and where would it start? What natural advantage would it's start give it? But if it couldn't reproduce asexually and didn't currently have any sexual organs, then how would it evolve anything?

Oh, and when Jordan referred to our 'capacity', he was speaking of our brain capacity.

You're making good points here insight. But you must remember that all evolution doesn't occur withe advantages in mind. As I said above, a lot of differentiation in speicies can be considered as random events.

And you're arguement about sexual organs doesn't seem that well off, I mean, what advantage does asexual reproduction have over sexual reproduction? None that I can see, unless of course you see the less chance of genetic alteration a good thing

I think the main problem with you're non acceptance with evolution is that you're looking for a 'missing' link for every species and every bodily organ. Some genetic variations could be carred recessivley and not be visible until the right chance arose. This works because of the long history that this planet has. The thing is that there is not one 'simple' answer to every type of evolution, there is no general formula.

You also shouldn't be too worried that evolution will either prove or disprove creationism. It doesn't matter either way really. If god does exist, then he most likely uses evolution to work with species. Evolution may be a complex system, but it works well at describing the possible past events. If god doesn't exist, then evolution will carry on as it always has. There's no reason to find out if it's right or wrong, because it's working as we speak.

For all we know, the process of evolution was left out of the transcribing of the bible. It makes sense, since there seems to be much that could have been left out.

But a random event that would lead to an /entire organ/ developing? Come on...

- Jordan

This has been covered in depth elsewhere. The Creation/evolution debate has been done, several times, on this site, and the Creationists usually end up coming back to similar arguments, the answers to most of which were comprehensively provided in the 19th century and have been repeatedly demonstrated since. They often use arguments like David/Insight's, which can be summarised as "I don't understand and cannot imagine how it could happen like that, therefore it can't have happened like that." Logic? You decide.

A perfect example of that is this whole debate about how you evolve organs. The question was posed, as I say, in the 19th century, very succinctly by a member of the Royal Society - "What is the use of half an eye?".

To which the answer is - it's bloody useful, actually, if you have the correct half. Look at a complete eye - it's basically similar to an old camera (you know kids, the ones that had actual FILM in them, not those new fangled digital contraptions - CCDs? Pah!) - it has a film (the retina), a lens which can be altered for focussing, a mechanism for adjusting the exposure for different light levels (iris), a coating to protect the lens while in use(cornea), even a lens cap (eyelid). It's not a particularly GOOD camera - most people's don't work properly without some prosthetic help (i.e. specs or contacts), but even so, for a camera grown out of jelly, it's pretty good. Looking at all those wonderful complex interacting parts you'd think there'd be no way such thing could come about by chance mutations. And you'd be wrong.

The very, very simplest possible eye is a skin cell which is sensitive to light. You can immediately see (if you've ANY imagination) how this would be useful to an organism which happened to develop such a cell (such a development is NOT a huge leap, genetically speaking). It could tell when it was day, and when it was night. It could tell if it was in the sun, or shade. This could be the difference between eating and being eaten, so it would tend to reproduce.

So you've got a light sensitive patch (like a horseshoe crab has...). Not even half an eye, maybe a tenth of an eye. And it helps, immediately.

It's not a stretch from there to some organism having that patch develop in a wrinkle or pit on its skin. Suddenly, IMMEDIATELY, it's even more useful - it can tell not only that there's light out there, but which direction it's coming from. WAY useful. So the guys with their patches in pits get more food and more chicks and more babies with patches in pits. The pits get more and more like little bell mines - a spherical space with a small opening, all due to the same evolutionary pressures.

All this is going on, one assumes, in REALLY early history - so the pit is full of water, 'cos that's where the life it. Trouble is, you stick it out into the air, and it dries up and doesn't work. Plus, with water washing in and out all day, it doesn't focus too well. So anyone who happens by chance to grow a thin covering of skin over the hole has a BIG advantage *right away* - so more babies with skin covering the hole.

I could go on, because every single feature of the eye confers an advantage the moment it arises, and it is perfectly possible to construct a step-by-step track from a simple patch of light sensitive skin to the eye you're using right now - or the eye of a bee, or a hawk, or an octopus. You might look at the above and say "yeah, but that's so unlikely, it couldn't happen!", which merely betrays an understandable human inability to comprehend the timescales and numbers involved. If you've ever bought a lottery ticket, or thought seriously that you can understand the age of the earth, you're guilty of this. Almost all of us are. We simply don't GET big numbers - we can't, at a gut level.

It's unlikely that I'll win the lottery this week, if I buy one ticket. It's pretty unlikely I'll win the lottery in my *lifetime*, if I buy one ticket a week. But evolution doesn't buy one ticket per week. It buys TRILLIONS and TRILLIONS of tickets, all with different sets of numbers, *every* second of *every* day, and it's been doing so for FIVE BILLION YEARS. Every single time an organism (be it bacterium or elephant) dies, or doesn't die, or reproduces, or doesn't, evolution just bought another lottery ticket, with a different set of numbers. Why is it such a surprise that it wins so often? Why is it even faintly curious that an organ as complex as an eye, or a lung, or a liver, could evolve from simpler beginnings? If you, personally, can't see how it could happen, doesn't that say more about your lack of understanding of those organs and their antecedents than it does about the credibility of the theory of evolution?

Computer simulations of the evolution of the eye have shown that at a conservative estimate an organism could realistically expect to start with simple patch of light sensitive skin and evolve an eye as complex as our own in a few million years. Sounds like a long time - but remember that life has been knocking about on this planet for a few BILLION years. It would be more surprising if the eye hadn't evolved completely independently several times. But it has, of course - octopus eyes are remarkably similar to our own in structure and operation, despite our common ancestor predating eyes by some way.

Well, that went on a bit. See the project on evolution and creation (reachable from my space and on the front page real soon now...) for more rambling by me, a guy who knows more about Creationism than I do because he BELIEVES it, and a guy who knows more about evolution than I do, and a girl... called Ben.

Laters...

H.

Agreed in full

I also can't wait for that project to come up, I've been hearing good things about it so far...

from post 24

> "sources other than the bible tell of his crucifixion"

The only one that does that I've been shown (Josephus) has a small section on the crucifixion that is widely regarded as a forgery by a well-meaning christian archivist. The passage doesn't show up in early copies of the text.

> "Again, there is little or no evidence against [the ressurection]"

There is little evidence for it either.

> "this leaves us with two choices - either"

false dichotomy. Muslims believe in a third choice, Jews a fourth, Atheists yet another. It's not as simple as gigantic conspiracy versus truth.

> "I am not a historian, so any comments I make on reliability at this point are based on what I have heard from historians, or read about what historians say about the bible."

So find out more. Read what historians say, to be sure, but read the views of a variety of researchers. Read the fundamentalist xtian texts, to be sure - but also read research from more progressive xtian historians - and from atheists, buddhists, jews, muslims - and the rest.

-Martin

>> "sources other than the bible tell of his crucifixion"
>The only one that does that I've been shown (Josephus) has a small >section on the crucifixion that is widely regarded as a forgery by a >well-meaning christian archivist. The passage doesn't show up in >early copies of the text.

If you don't believe that one, go and look at writings by Tacitus.

>> "Again, there is little or no evidence against [the ressurection]"
> There is little evidence for it either.

Well, apart from it being the entire basis of Christianity...erm, fine.

>> "this leaves us with two choices - either"
>false dichotomy. Muslims believe in a third choice, Jews a fourth, >Atheists yet another. It's not as simple as gigantic conspiracy >versus truth.

Erm, true Jews, Muslims and atheists all must believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead because they must not believe that Jesus is the Son of God! Therefore they must believe that what his first disciples taught was wrong. Would you explain what you mean by these 3rd, 4th, etc. choices? It seems to me that the choice is that Jesus rose from the dead or didn't.

>So find out more. Read what historians say, to be sure, but read the >views of a variety of researchers. Read the fundamentalist xtian >texts, to be sure - but also read research from more progressive >xtian historians - and from atheists, buddhists, jews, muslims - and >the rest.

I have done. None of what I have read has persuaded me otherwise. I will of course read more and keep an open mind, but I am sticking by my decision to follow Christ in the meantime.

me[Andy]g

Any particular part of Tacitus? I understand he wrote rather a lot...
Do you accept that the relevant sections in Josephus are a historically dubious source?

> "apart from it being the entire basis of christianity"

Which isn't any use as a historical source. It just shows that the religion was successful - not that the idea was correct. But sure, there is some evidence in the shape of the bible.

Jesus either did rise, or he didn't - but it doesn't have to be a massive conspiracy on the part of the apostles if he didn't. They could have been hallucinating (severe stress often does that). They could have been misinformed. They could have meant the ressurection as a symbolic act rather than a literal one. They could have said nothing about the ressurection and the early church could have altered the records to create a more compelling story. Or some combination of all these things.

Regarding historians - I thought you said something along the lines that most or all historians agree that the bible is reliable evidence - that conflicts with what I've read, so I wondered if perhaps you had only heard half the story... sorry to jump to conclusions...

-Martin